Sunday, January 24, 2010

After the Storm...

No rain in sight so took the camera out with me today, since I didn't get any pictures DURING the storm...

Standing on the west side of my house looking southwest which is where that big storm blew in from... and VERY THANKFUL to have NOTHING but BLUE SKY!!!

But WAIT! LOOK! WHAT is THAT peeking over the neighbor's house????? It's too soon for another storm... Wait a minute, looking south and west here... AHA! It's just the steam cloud from Palo Verde (for those of you not local, that's the nuclear generating plant) WHEW!!!

The "ravine" on the left side of the road from our front gate back toward the horses - you can see the standing water shining in the morning sun.I didn't take any closeup pictures of what I was DOING while I was walking around... care to take a guess? Hint - it's one of Mikey's pet peeves... a lot of dogs might live here but the yard doesn't need to look like it LOL... I headed back to the big horse stalls that are next to the neighbor's house you see in the first pictures...

The first stall on the north side...ANd the second stall on the north side. You can see by the holes left in the muck that the horses usually eat in these first two stalls.

The third stall on the north side - obviously it did not get as much dirt as the first two!

The fourth stall on the north side, also obviously needs more dirt addedThe fifth stall, with no cover at all, since the gate was shut and no one was in there to stir things up it dried pretty fast. Because of course there is NO WAY that Miss Darci Jean would walk in ANY of the other four!The aisle way where we normally walk to put the horses away for dinner...The first pen on the south side of the big horse stalls... the girls shut the gate and shut themselves out, so no hoofprints in this mud...Looking down the "south side"As I head around toward the mini pen, I come to the first of TWO wheelbarrows full almost to the top!My new girl Nikki Renee. with the swamp behind herNow she is eyeing the dogs walking with me...Wiley thinks the camera might be a snack...The east third of the mini pen, in the worst shape... I'm hoping keeping Dillon and his girls out of his pen will help it dry quick so I can put them back, then I can open the gates and let Wiley and his girls over to the dry side of this pen. But right now, even THIS is better than Dillon's pen...The middle third of the mini pen, really soupy in spots...The west third of the mini pen, actually pretty dry!Dillon, not happy to be "sharing" a pen with Wiley, despite the fact that he lucked out and got the best section... the boys do much better when they have the barn between their pens!He sure is a handsome little guy though huh?Every conceivable receptacle is full of water... I dumped buckets and barrels and all kinds of miscellaneous things and made a bunch of new puddles!Luna, home again from Boot Camp, and the ONE spot in the arena that the water didn't soak in - where the green feeder used to be and they always stand to eat, and have it packed down. We moved the green feeder over last night so the girls didn't have to stand in the mud to eat.Now I am standing with my back to the arena, looking north on the east side of our property. The green on the right is the neighbor's dump truck which is backed up to our fence, if you look carefully you can see a shader right above it, that is part of Dillon's pen, which was evacuated due to flooding... between that and the container you see is "the road" which I had the neighbor build up on the east side, leaving a low spot along the container, in the hopes that water running from the north part of our property would bypass Dillon's pen. The smaller storms we have had since the "road work" proved this to be a great idea... however THIS storm just dumped so much water we learned a couple places we need to make the high spots higher... Pretty much all the dirt you see right in front was under water until we trneched to run it off, as well as Dillons whole pen... And on the left...Here's a close-up, of the container that 5 of my donkeys spent the night in the day it rained so much... It was awful dark for them but they were out of the wind and their shared body heat dried them all up pretty fast. Cleaning it yesterday was NOT fun though...Caught a nice shot of Dodge sunning himselfI just dumped the second wheelbarrow (it's just like the other one, NOT the red one you see upside down here) and you can see the water running off down the trench we dug to drain from the "road"We trenched all the way back to the fenceTwo of the three small pens inside the Donkey Garden have a couple of small sections of roof, my goal is to use some scrap we have and attach the two roofs, without moving them, so that there is one great big roof...So most of my afternoon was spent hosing off scrap panels, dragging them up front, measuring and marking so Randy could saw them, dragging them halfway back to where they came from and over the fence into the Donkey Garden, climbing ladders and screwing down new roof panels. And YAY done with one... kinda hodge-podge looking but at least they will have a BIG shader to hopefully keep them dry when the next storm hits Wednesday... unfortunately the other pen, just to the south, was still way too muddy to risk a ladder, so it will have to wait. But the materials are all prepped and ready to go so the next one won't take near so long!

I'm beat! Almost glad tomorrow is Monday so I can go to the office and REST!

2 comments:

Nothing like a big storm to show you all the things you need to do, lol. We've been fixing roof and scraping mud off the horses. You reminded me, I need to pick up my dog poop! Been to wet to do it the last few days!

Wow, that blue sky and sunshine look nice, eh? Now you just need a light wind to help dry things up even more! :) Looks like everyone fared pretty well all and all, though. We face mud like that most of the winter, unfortunately. :( Your mini donkeys are really cute!!